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Thanks to Trump, COVID-19 Vaccine Further Out of Reach

Trump sides with pharmaceutical companies and private profit instead of world’s people.

by Jennifer Lin

Trump has announced that the US won’t participate in the WHO-backed COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility (COVAX), a global initiative of 156 countries working together to develop a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine and distribute it globally. Trump has already withdrawn funding from the WHO, which he falsely accuses of being controlled by China.

While international organizations including the WHO have praised China for its pandemic response and for assisting countries worldwide in curbing the pandemic, Trump insists on blaming China for Covid-19 in order to distract us from just how horrible the situation is in the US. Trump, who doesn’t believe in wearing masks and wants everyone to go back to work even though 200,000+ people in the US have died from Covid-19, once again shows he has zero commitment to public health.

Rather than being on the side of the people, Trump and his cronies are siding with pharmaceutical companies that have been profiting off the pandemic. One of these companies, Gilead, was given $99 million of US taxpayer money to develop remdesivir, a potential treatment for Covid-19. Gilead plans to sell remdesivir at $3120 per patient.

Pharmaceutical companies like Gilead see the pandemic as a giant cash cow, where the people fund research and development for lifesaving resources that Big Pharma hoards to secure billion-dollar profits. That’s why pharmaceutical companies are racing to produce vaccines as part of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, which aims to sell vaccines by January 2021.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has already granted companies like Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer over 6 billion of our tax dollars to develop vaccines. When he was head of Eli Lilly, current HHS Secretary Alex Azar tripled the price of insulin. When asked if HHS plans to make COVID-19 vaccines affordable for all, he replied, “We would want to ensure that we’d work to make it affordable, but we can’t control that price because we need the private sector to invest.” In other words, the U.S. ruling class sees healthcare as nothing but a commodity and is willing to let people die so the rich can profit.

Trump is continuing with the same policy of mass murder we’ve seen since the pandemic began. Corporations have received bailouts totaling $500 billion while workers have lost their livelihoods and lives because of cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and SNAP, mass unemployment, evictions, and being forced to return to unsafe jobs. How will we workers be expected to pay whatever outrageous prices Big Pharma charges for a vaccine when we’re already bankrupt trying to stay alive?

The WHO says another $35 billion will be needed for COVAX to succeed. Trump’s decision not to join this global effort is a threat not to just our safety, but to the safety of people worldwide. The only way out of the pandemic requires countries working together to develop a vaccine that everyone has equal access to, with an emphasis on protecting the most vulnerable populations. Countries like Cuba and China understand this; they are committed to offering vaccines to other countries rather than hoarding them for profit. We must oppose U.S. capitalists by championing global solidarity and organizing to secure healthcare as a right.

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Breonna Taylor – Say Her Name

Six months ago, Louisville police shot and killed sister Breonna Taylor, 26 years old, who was sleeping in her home. The police lied to obtain a no-knock warrant seeking an individual they already had under arrest. With no warning, in a KKK-type raid, police burst into her home. Her partner, Kenneth Walker, used a legally owned gun to fire one shot at those who invaded his home. The police fired 33 shots killing Breonna and spreading bullets everywhere.

Breonna Taylor was an award winning EMT, a brave woman who served everyone during the pandemic despite the danger to herself. No one is indicted for her murder—for her lynching—at the hands of the racist, out of control police, who work hand in hand with right wing militias and who serve the interests of the ultrarich. With compassion, training, and an accountability to our communities, we can keep us safe but not while the racist protectors of the rich are free to terrorize us.

All we hear from the big business media is that Black Lives Matter protestors, Black and white, are violent outside agitators, terrorists, and looters. Both Trump and Biden have disparaged protestors. Yet 40 million people have joined these protests. The violence has come from the police and armed right wing groups funded by millionaires. Protestors have a right to defend ourselves. Of course, we organize defense and protection from violent fascist goons. Recent exposés have uncovered the emails, texts, and messages of the scum that Trump calls “good people” that document plotted assassinations, killings, fire bombings, and other attacks. The fascists who plan and execute these attacks count on the police to keep them safe.

Over 15,000 protestors have been arrested since the murder of George Floyd. While one of the cops who killed Breonna was only charged with firing into other apartments, none are charged with her murder. They should all be charged, indicted, and put behind bars. But charges should not only be for the triggerman but the police departments and politicians who fund, support, and protect them as accomplices before and after the fact.

The big business media heaped the same lies and blame on civil rights activists. We the people must reject their accusations and call for the freedom of all arrested protestors and the jailing of every last murderer of the more than 14 anti-racist protestors who have been killed since the uprisings began in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

The struggle to win justice for Breonna and all victims of racist police terror is far from over. The struggle will continue until we put society in the hands of working class rather than the capitalist class, which uses terror and violence here and around the world to gain and protect profits.

The New Orleans Workers Group has organized and will continue to organize mass protests against police terror just as we will continue our work to halt evictions, raise wages, and win income and security for all workers and oppressed people.

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Vote No on Amendment 1

Illustration by New Orleans Abortion Fund

Fight Back Against ALL Attacks on Reproductive Rights

It is imperative that the people of Louisiana vote NO on Amendment 1 on Tuesday, November 3 to protect abortion access in the state.

The capitalist class will not rest until they have stripped the working class of our rights to make our own decisions about our bodies. In Louisiana, they have been campaigning relentlessly to take away our rights to abortion, in recent years passing the most restrictive laws in the country. When their last attempt, which would have made abortion nearly impossible to access, failed, they immediately tried again. This time, they are seeking to limit abortion access via Amendment 1, which will be on the ballot in the November election. The amendment would prevent the state constitution from providing any support for abortion.

Just as with the previous attacks on our reproductive rights, this amendment is backed by Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards and state senator Katrina Jackson, as well as the entire Republican party, Louisiana Right to Life, and the Catholic Church. All of them are funded by out-of-state, right-wing foundations, think tanks, and organizations like the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council and other capitalists. These are the same entities who have backed anti-LGBTQ, anti-woman, anti-reproductive rights laws across the country.

The purpose of these laws is to prevent women from participating in society, terrorize LGBTQ people, and extract as much profit as possible from the working class. These same capitalists back wars around the world, keep children in the concentration camps across Louisiana (where they have also forced hysterectomies on people), support the death penalty and mass incarceration, and subject the working class, especially Black workers, to fascist police terror. Their claims of being “pro-life” are nothing but blatant hypocrisy. They care only for profit, not for children, unborn or otherwise. These laws are acts of terror against the people.

We must not only vote against them but also organize. The state’s laws against abortion already greatly limit access, prevent abortion from being covered by any insurance, and impose unjust and unnecessary restrictions on providers. We must vote against this amendment and fight back against every limitation to abortion access already on the books. Abortion must be free, accessible, and legal. Anything less is an attack on all working class people’s rights to control of our own bodies.

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Abolish ICE, Relocate the Honduran Consulate

by Aminta Zea

As we stand in solidarity with the protestors in Portland who have been subject to fascist, white supremacist terror imposed by the U.S. government, we also remain cognizant that militaristic kidnappings are nothing new. For decades, the undocumented have been violently kidnapped and removed from their communities by ICE (Immigration service) agents and Border Patrol.

New Orleans has the largest Honduran community in the United States and has been besieged by ICE terror. Yet the Honduran consulate, representing the government put in by an illegal U.S. coup in 2009 (by Obama and Clinton) is now in an ICE Field Office at 1250 Poydras St. We demand it be relocated.

We recognize the parallels between the functions of the police and ICE, and we actively work towards abolishing these systems of racist oppression that continuously harm Black people, both migrants and U.S. citizens. We recognize that if we wish to abolish the police, we must also abolish ICE. ICE has only been around since 2003; there was a world before it and there can be a new world without it and without the police. From Portland, to New Orleans, to Tegucigalpa we remain firm in our rebellion against the capitalist class that is relentless in its genocide of Black and Brown people. Los pueblos de Honduras y los pueblos de Louisiana se mantengan firmes en su autonomía y su libertad.

Honduras, like many countries in Latin America subject to U.S. imperialism, has undergone massive state repression after the 2009 US backed coup against democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya’s policies included raising the minimum wage by 60 percent, free education for all children (including free lunch to the poorest children), reducing poverty by 10 percent during his first two years in office, and working towards an expansion of the reproductive rights of women. Because he put the Honduran people’s welfare above the interests of transnational corporations, he was removed from power by U.S. backed military forces. If we want to understand why so many from the northern triangle of Central America choose to flee to the United States, then we must realize that it is U.S. imperialism that pushes these people out of their homes.

The ruling elite continue to impose themselves on Latin American countries that say NO to capitalism and NO to a life where basic needs remain unmet. The current conditions of Honduras mirror the same state repression and violence we see here in the U.S. As millions of Americans march for Black Lives Matter, let’s remember that this fight does not stop at the borders of the United States. In the month of July alone, six Garifuna — Black Indigenous people — were murdered in Honduras under the dictatorship of Juan Orlando Hernandez. Garifuna people are fighting against their fascist regime in order to protect their ancestral lands and the rights of Afro-Indigenous and Indigenous people amid encroachment by the capitalist class.

The only way to combat racist exploitation, transmisogyny, and patriarchy is to overthrow capitalism. Imperialism — when the United States imposes violence and corruption on another country for profit — is the highest form of capitalism. Workers in the United States can play a crucial role in active solidarity with workers from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, who continuously fight U.S. imperialism and exploitation. We, too, are now seeing acts of war imposed by imperialism here at home.

Workers of all countries should stand up firmly to oppose to the illegitimate government of Juan Orlando Hernandez. We oppose the Honduran consulate being held at an ICE Field Office. The racist, discriminatory policies that occur at that office at 1250 Poydras St. prevent Hondurans from accessing services from the consulate for fear of arrest.

We oppose and aim to abolish ICE, to abolish the police and all forms of colonial subjugation and oppression. No more to the capitalist bosses who continue to steal our wealth. No more to the U.S. politicians that let them carry out this theft.

It’s time we workers say enough is enough. We will not stop fighting until all of us are free.

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Free the Cameroonian 40 Now!

Aug. 14: People in ICE detention at Pine Prairie, LA hold signs reading “HELP” and “WE ARE INNOCENTS”

by A Scribe Called Quess?

“We are like a slave under a master with no place to go. The master[…] is ICE.” So said some of the 43 Cameroonian men detained in an ICE concentration camp in Pine Prairie, LA in a video published on Juneteenth this year. The men have been locked up by ICE for as much as 19 months with no end in sight. Racist Judge Scott Laragy has dismissed or “lost” evidence presented by the men while abusively telling them to shut up and trying to intimidate them into signing voluntary deportation during trials, adding to the 20% rate of African migrants facing deportation versus other immigrant groups with larger populations in the US. In response, they waged a 10-day hunger strike that landed them in solitary confinement where they were forced to drink toilet water. All this in a concentration camp where one out of five detainees have tested positive for COVID. The treatment of the men is illegal, as they qualify to seek asylum in the U.S., a right guaranteed by the Constitution for non-citizens fleeing political persecution in their homelands.

In their native Cameroon, a civil war has been waged by the dominant French-speaking government against the Southern, English-speaking region of Cameroon since 2016. This genocidal war is rooted in 55-year-old tensions between the two regions that have existed since British Cameroon established independence in 1961 and joined French Cameroon. Colonization left a deep divide that has festered over time as the French-speaking majority has tried to dominate the English-speaking minority to control their oil supply. This type of capitalistic oppression born of European colonization is all too common in the motherland. And its effects lead to refugee crises and migrants seeking safety in the U.S., the very country that helps perpetuate the oppression that led to the migrants’ crisis in the first place.

Aug. 14: New Orleans Worker’s Group leads protest of the illegal and brutal detention of migrants at GEO Group’s for-profit ICE detention center in Pine Prairie, LA.

As U.S. citizens, we can use our privilege to raise up the voices of our oppressed workers overseas. When interviewed by WV, Divine of the Cameroonian 40 encouraged folks on the outside to help the world hear their cry by contacting them for interviews, sharing their story on social media, and waging demonstrations on their behalf as New Orleans Worker’s Group comrades did on August 14th when they drove a motorcade to Pine Prairie and raised their voices in solidarity with the men. To learn more ways to support, email neworleansworkersgroup@gmail.com.

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75 Years Since Hiroshima & Nagasaki

by Christina Tareq

This August marks 75 years since the United States’ horrific nuclear bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was the first and so far only deliberate use of atomic bombs against a human population in history. Over 220,000 Japanese civilians lost their lives in the span of two days. Survivors reported seeing charred heads and limbs of loved ones and neighbors strewn through the streets. The cities were flattened within a matter of seconds. Survivors faced a decades-long struggle to recover from the fallout, including nuclear contamination of water and agricultural fields, cancer, and birth defects.

75 years later, despite the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Trump administration and the Pentagon are systematically withdrawing from international treaties that limit the use of nuclear aggression. The Trump administration declined to renew the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in August of 2019. That same year 22 billion in tax payer dollars were budgeted towards the further development and accumulation of the nuclear arsenal. The likelihood that the U.S. will renew the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 2021 seems increasingly remote.

Despite the irreversible destruction that nuclear weapons pose to the very existence of our planet and human life, the Trump administration, Pentagon and allies are forging ahead to expand the US nuclear arsenal program over the next decade to the tune of $1.7 trillion in American taxpayer dollars. Congress has approved the 2020 National Defense Military Act, which will allot $740.5 billion to military spending (the most US military spending since WWII) to further develop and amass a nuclear arsenal to be stored in US military bases around the world. This same act hypocritically renews sanctions on North Korea due to their ownership of nuclear weapons. The Federation of American Scientists report that while the US has nearly 7,000 nuclear weapons, it is estimated that North Korea has 30 to 60 at most.

It’s clear the National Defense Act has nothing to do with defending the American people and everything to do defending American capitalist profits abroad, through war and fear-mongering. With only a fraction of what the Pentagon is proposing for weapons of mass destruction, every person in the US could have quality healthcare, safe jobs or universal income.

It’s time for the resurgence of a mass movement in the US to demand that working people are no longer looted to fatten the wallets of arms manufacturers and war-hungry CEOs. The wealth American working people create must be used to feed and protect the people, not to export mass destruction and terror on other working people of the world.

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Bolivian Workers and Peasants Flood the Streets, Demand an End to U.S. backed Dictatorship

Bolivian national strike and nationwide road blockades were called for by the Bolivian trade union center, the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) in August.

by Adam Pedesclaux

For the past few weeks, tens of thousands have been marching, striking, and blocking traffic along many of the major highways across Bolivia. They are demanding the resignation of the coup government of Jeanine Áñez. Áñez’ fascist government has carried out cuts to social programs and privatizations, which have wrecked the national healthcare system, killing thousands. It has brutally repressed and massacred workers, peasants, and indigenous people who have stood up to defend themselves. Using the pandemic as an excuse, her government has postponed elections to maintain its grip on power.

On November 2019, with U.S. backing, Áñez’s right wing government of the rich removed the democratically elected president Evo Morales and other high ranking officials of the MAS (Movement for Socialism) party of Bolivia. The ultra-rich in Bolivia are deeply racist and want to crush the historic liberation of the Indigenous masses in Bolivia, which Morales’ party stood for. Morales’ party had also worked to guarantee universal healthcare, improve literacy, and return land to the indigenous people that had been stolen by the rich. Áñez government is attempting to reverse every last one of these progressive reforms but the trade unions, indigenous and peasant organizations in the streets are determined to fight back.

Fascist Coup in Bolivia the Work of Billionaires

Bolivia has one of the world’s largest reserves of lithium, a mineral needed for the production for batteries.

The U.S. company Tesla requires vast amounts of lithium to maintain production of its electric cars.

When it was recently reported that Tesla’s billionaire CEO, Elon Musk, might have played a role in supporting the right-wing coup in Bolivia, Musk replied: “ We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” These are the words of the same billionaire who called the covid lockdown “fascist,” as thousands of predominantly Black, Latinx, and Indigenous frontline workers were succumbing to the virus and who vocally opposed any government relief for workers. In moments like these, the real motives of the U.S. ruling class are revealed. We know that U.S. billionaires are conscious of their role in oppression and misery around the world, but rarely are they so frank.

The future of the world’ peoples should be in their own hands, not in the hands of billionaire creeps like Elon Musk.

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Report From an Infected Office

by An Anonymous Office Worker

There is a sense of impending doom hanging over the company. The fourth positive COVID test sends rumors through the staff, but there’s no word from management except to a select few. No one is given a chance to decide for themselves whether they’ve been exposed.

Everyone is confused and upset: “Why are they making us come in when it’s not safe? Why won’t they let us work from home? Who’s going to be next?”

The lack of information only makes the terror worse. The bosses want the company to remain open no matter what danger it brings to workers. The measures taken to protect the workers are the bare minimum and clearly not adequate. When someone gets sick, the managers insist the exposure didn’t happen at the company. “We don’t know what they do in their free time” is a mantra they repeat, as if it will wash the blood off their hands.

“This is the new normal,” they claim, despite many other countries getting the pandemic under control. “We’re following the guidelines,” they insist, despite multiple people being sick.

They pass the blame onto workers while putting a metaphorical gun to our head, forcing us to work or be fired. As eviction courts reopen and the unemployment rate skyrockets, the alternative is to find another job in a dead job market or risk quitting and becoming homeless.

They twist every word to keep the company open. They ignore the fact that the guidelines have failed to stop the pandemic, that there are more than a thousand deaths per day around the country. They have the ability to make the workers safer, but they refuse, all in the name of making money. They don’t care that their excuses don’t make sense. To call them “irresponsible” is to suggest they don’t know exactly what they’re doing. They have prioritized profits over people.

Workers have little choice, unless we’re organized. In many places, management has kept people isolated, disorganized, and terrified of causing trouble. Throughout the city, the infection rate increases as workers are forced into danger. Workers feel powerless to stand up for themselves against manipulative bosses. But the truth is, the bosses are scared. They got a glimpse of what the world would look like if workers took back their power, organized, and refused to work when the pandemic forced them to shut down initially. They have called people back in a desperate attempt to save their businesses, knowing that if we unite and fight back, there’s nothing they can do.

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Stand Up for Farmworkers

We Need Farmworkers, We Don’t Need Greedy Capitalists

by Jennifer Lin

COVID-19 is killing migrant farmworkers across the country. Farmworkers cannot socially distance as they work closely together and live in overcrowded housing. Many do not have access to bathrooms or clean water. While these essential workers risk their lives during a pandemic to put food on everyone’s tables, corporate farmers are denying them masks, paid leave, and hazard pay. How dare they, when Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave corporate “farmers” over $19 BILLION to boost their profits.

Over 70% of farmworkers are migrants. Even though they feed us all they do not get unemployment benefits or stimulus checks, food stamps or Medicaid. Because of their terrible working conditions, which can be taken away if unemployed, working or staying home is equally a death sentence. Now racist politicians are blaming them for spreading COVID-19.

Florida governor DeSantis is scapegoating migrant farmworkers for the state’s record surge in COVID-19 cases. He said these workers are “overwhelmingly Hispanic” and “you don’t want those folks mixing with the general public.” DeSantis is not just racist, he’s a liar. The state health department did not provide data to back his claims, and according to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, most new cases have occurred in areas with little agriculture and is due to bosses bowing to corporate pressure to reopen and refusing to carry out measures to stop the spread. Beaches, bars, and right-wing churches are packed disease-spreaders. COVID-19 cases in Florida are spreading in migrant communities at a deadly rate because DeSantis and the capitalists do not care about the people. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (farmworkers), have been demanding tests, contact tracing, quarantine spaces, PPE, and relief funds for the county’s farmworkers since April. DeSantis has ignored their demands.

Farmworkers are joining hundreds of meatpacking workers, warehouse workers, healthcare workers, hospitality workers, teachers, firefighters, longshore workers, and more in strikes to demand essential protections. In Wasco, CA, workers in the union United Farm Workers organized a strike and picket line after 150 of 200 workers at Primex Farms, a nut company, tested positive for COVID-19. After ignoring workers’ demands for PPE, social distancing, and sick leave, Primex retaliated against the workers by firing them. But these workers will not back down; they demand to return to their jobs under safe conditions. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the United Farm Workers have started petitions around their demands.

Trump and Democrat politicians are killing essential workers. They are giving billions to agribusiness and Agribanks but withholding benefits to farmworkers. They do not care if we starve or die; they want to send us all back to work so that they get can get rich off our backs. These greedy capitalists are waging war on us, and farmworkers and other essential workers are on the frontline, fighting back. Without farmworkers, we don’t eat. It’s time we stand in solidarity with farmworkers and demand protection for them and all the essential workers who keep us alive!

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Nurses Demand Safety Protections, Relief: “We Aren’t Hospital Propery”

On August 5, members of National Nurses United (NNU) held more than 200 actions inside and outside hospital facilities across the country. They are demanding emergency production of PPE and cash payments, extended unemployment benefits, and daycare subsidies through the end of 2020 to support families in crisis.

“Nurses know that this country’s rampant social, economic, and racial injustice has been killing our patients all along. COVID-19 is just forcing us as a society to face these problems,” said Bonnie Castillo, RN and NNU executive director. “These recent COVID surges and uncontrolled infections and deaths, the failure of employers to protect our nurses and other workers, the outrageously high rates of unemployment and hunger, the totalitarian crackdown on protesters — every crisis we are seeing now can be traced back to our failure to value human lives over profit.”

“Nurses are still at risk,” said Mary C. Turner, an intensive care unit RN and president of the Minnesota Nurses Association, whose members are participating in the actions. “We still reuse PPE that was meant to be discarded. We still care for COVID-19 patients and non-COVID patients at the same time. And we still struggle to protect ourselves so we can protect our patients.“

“COVID has exposed everything that has been wrong with our system,” said Zenei Cortez, RN and a president of NNU. “The old way was a huge failure. Now is the time to reenvision a world based on nurses’ values of caring, compassion, and community.”

Source: National Nurses United